Industrial Exhibitions and Modern Progress

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^

INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

AND

MODEEN PROGRESS

BY

PATEICK GEDDES

{Reprinted from " Industries " )

EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS

1887

^1

PEEFATOEY NOTE.

The general aim and argument of this little book
are so briefly summed up in its Introduction and
Conclusion as to render any further exposition of
them unnecessary here. I have therefore simply to
express my obligations to the Proprietors and Editor
of Industries, and to their representative in Glasgow,
Mr* James Mavor; as also to Mr. J. Marchbank,
late Secretary of the Edinburgh International Exhi-
bition, for permission to consult his collection of
books relating to International Exhibitions.

PATRICK GEDDES.

6 James Court, Lawnmarket,

Edinburgh, I6tk July 1887.

" This fair, thereforef is an ancient thing of long
standing^ and a very great fair, , . . NoiOy as I said,
the way to the Celestial City lies jxLst through the town
where this liisty fair is kept, and he that will go to the
City, and yet not go through this fair, must needs go
out of the world."

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Pbeface, ......... iii

Introduction, 1

I. Retrospect of Exhibitions, .... 3

II. Advantages and Disadvantages of Exhibitions, 10

III. Practical Possibilities of Exhibitions, . 17

rV. Practical Possibilities — Arrangement, . 23

Y. Industrial and Technical Education, 29

VI. The Organisation of Industry, ... .33

YII. Juries and the Principles of Judgment, . . 36

Vm. The Conditions of Design and Art Criticism, . 42

IX. Exhibitions and Art Education, .49

X. Exhibitions and Social Progress, . . .53

Conclusion, 67

INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS- AND
MODERN PROGRESS.

INTRODUCTION.

Since at the very outset of all serious thought, not only
upon political and social, but even strictly industrial and
economic questions, we have to substitute for the notion of
mere individual moneyinaking that of the aggregate produc-
tion of material wealth, there can be no better standpoint
for an intelligent survey of modern progress than that
afforded by an international exhibition. This Inust be
viewed, however, not merely as an extensive bazaar with
attached places of amusement, but as a central museum of
industry ; too vast and costly for permanence, but all the
more fully illustrative of production, and of social progress
in every respect. Moreover, since each exhibition is the
highest expression of the industrial po'Ssibilities and general
civilisation of its place and time, a retrospect of the great •
exhibitions, from that of London in 1851 to that of Paris m
1878, is seen to involve a retrospect alike of the advances of
production and the arts, and of progress in health and
education, in social feeling and public life. Nor is an exhi-
bition a landmark of progress merely, but a starting-point
as well ; it is filled not only with the flower of present
industry, but with the seed of that ol future years. And
this latter aspect is not the less "important. The results of
each exhibition thils come up for consideration ; and, avoid-
ing the vague rhapsodies of progress which usually have to
do duty for this, we must attempt a fair summing-up of the
advantages and drawbacks of past exhibitions, of thevc ^^^
and bad effects on induatriaA. mi^ ^oohsiJL ^x^^«aa». '^S^cssaa*^

2 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

and thus only, we shall be in a position fairly to criticise
and profit by such recent minor exhibitions as those of
Edinburgh and Liverpool, and we shall be able to consider
the pressing practical question of the criticism of present
exhibitions, notably those of Manchester and Newcastle this
year, or that of the organisation of future ones, as at Glasgow
or Melbourne the year following. For it is in proportion as
we disentangle the lines of partly upward and partly down-
ward progress in past exhibitions, that we shall be success-
ful in organising future ones. These once grasped, we can
proceed with economy and certainty to construct our exhi-
bition either on the one line, as an extended shop- window,
music saloon, and refreshment bar of unparalleled lustre and
magnificence ; or, on the other, as a true museum, somewhat
less partial and confused, of freal material and social pro-
gress in the immediate past, and a school, somewhat more
effective and inspiring, of these in the immediate future.""^

AND MODERN PROGRESS.

CHAPTER I.

Retrospect of Exhibitions.

For practical, if not for antiquarian purposes, the earliest
industrial exhibitions were those held in the rooms of the
Society of Arts in 1756 and 1761. A small exhibition of
Bohemian industries was held at Prague in 1791 ; but the
first distinctly national exhibition was that of Paris in 1798.
This arose in the attempt to keep out British industry, a
gold medal being oflfered to the exhibitor who should deal
the most fatal blow to English commerce. Others took
place in 1802 and 1806, but not again till 1819 ; thereafter
every four or five years till 1849. The earliest suggestion
of an international exhibition seems to have been made as
early as 1833, at the provincial exhibition of Abbeville, by
the famous archaeologist Boucher de Perthes ; and it may be
noted in passing as not a little remarkable that the same
man should have been nearly twenty years before his con-
temporaries in insight alike into the remotest past and the
immediate future of civilisation. In 1848 the project was
seriously mooted ; but the reactionary Government of 1849
held the proposal '*to have emanated from the enemies of
French industry. " During the preceding twenty years small
exhibitions were held everywhere throughout Europe ; thus,
not only Austria and Germany, Belgium and Switzerland,
Italy and Sweden, but even Spain, Portugal, and Russia
had their exhibitions. From 1829 triennial exhibitions were
held in Dublin, and from 1828 an unsuccessful exhibition in
London dragged on till 1833, finally degenerating into a
mere bazaar ; that of 1845, however, was more successful,
and that of Birmingham in 1849 was the best which had
been held in England. In the same year, the Society ot
Arts procured a Royal Comxniaaioii\iO ^c»aa>JXi& «x:^^^^^ass^

4 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

of holding an international exhibition. The project was
warmly supported by Prince Albert, and the report being
favourable, the first international exhibition was rapidly
orj;anised on a scale of unprecedented vastness, and the
famous Crystal Palace was opened in Hyde Park in May
1851, amid no small rejoicings ; in fact, with a burst of
optimism unparalleled at any rate since 1789. While the
Paris Exhibition of 1798 had only 1 10 exhibitors, and that
of 1849, 6,500, that of London had 17,000 exhibitors, whose
goods were valued at three-quarters of a million, while the
visitors numbered 6,000,000, yielding a clear profit of over
£200,000. Of the million square feet of space, one half was
taken up by foreign countries. The respective national,
predominances were already well marked, Britain being
easily first in raw materials, mechanism, and manufactures ;
Germany in products involving the general and technical
education of the workman, such as printing and the kindred
trades, the cheaper glass and porcelain wares, etc. ; while
France stood unrivalled in the artistic industries. This was
even more clearly shown by the result of the next Paris
Exhibition, which took place in 1855, and which, though on
a small scale, had a greater number of exhibitors, and a far
more markedly artistic character.

In 1862 the second London Exhibition took place. Its
plan was similar to that of its predecessor, save that a retro-
spective collection of paintings and sculpture showed an
increased artistic endeavour. But the most remarkable
advance was made by the Paris Exhibition of 1867, which

. not only greatly exceeded its predecessors in extent, but
still more markedly in conception and execution. The col-
lections were arranged more admirably than in any previous
or perhaps subsequent exhibition, a simple classification of
products based on their uses beiug adopted. Each class of
products occupied a concentric gallery, while to the various
countries were allotted radial sections of an appropriate size.
Processes of industry were also for the first time shown
in action, and the industrial progress of France was well
attested in many ways. The official report tersely put
the problem of contemporary material progress — **What

oa^jprzaes are beat £tted to develop productioii in ^^^neral

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 5

on the surface of the planet, and to encourage the best
division of labour?" this question being also followed into
its branches, e.gr., means of communication, like inter-
oceanic canals and trans-continental railways ; international
telegraphy and postage ; unity of weights, measures, and
80 on. Higher questions, too, than those of exploitation
received effective treatment. Not only were architecture
and .the subordinate arts copiously illustrated, but this
exposition is memorable as for the first time definitely
passing beyond the field of mere production, to consider
that for which production exists. New departures of this
kind were the departments of education, dwellings, health,
and domestic economy; in short, the maintenance and
evolution of the community had for the first time received
public recognition beside the production of wealth.

In 1873 took place the Vienna Exhibition, which ended
in a heavy deficit, attributable partly to the geographical
remoteness of Vienna, partly to the recent Franco-German
war, and the occurrence of a serious speculative and com-
mercial crisis, itself largely excited by the exhibition.
Despite this want of success, the show was richer and
fuller than any of its predecessors, and more evidential of
civic and public magnificence. Notable new features on the
side of production were an historical collection of discoveries
and inventions, and copious illustrations of industrial pro-
cesses, with comparisonjs of old and new. On the higher
side, the appliances of health and education and public
culture were even more fully illustrated than at Paris.
Public lectures,. too, were instituted, and a dozen congresses
held, on mechanics, medicine, history, economics, and so
forth. In 1876 took place the Cientennial Exhibition at
Philadelphia. Although as usual exceeding all predecessors
in vastness, it was necessarily less cosmopolitan and more
largely occupied by the/mechanism and immediate products
of the primary industrie^ thus corresponding in its phase
of development to thaiKof 1851. /its most noteworthy
original feature was the government building, in which
were illustrated the functions of government in ^wjfc'aaA.
its resources in warM

But it 18 with 'EEe Paxia ^x\i\\>\t\oTi cil VS:;^ ''^^^'^ "^"^

6 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

progress of general exhibitions hitherto culminates, alike
in quantity and quality. This was due partly to the popular
enthusiasm of the proudest of nations, eager to demonstrate
the supremacy in arts which she had lost in arms ; largely,
too, to the legitimate political purposes of at once evidencing
her resumed place in the councils of Europe, and of peace-
fully displaying her re-organised national resources against
the incessant menace of German re-invasion . Its magnificence
of display of all kinds, decorative and festal, its extent, and
its throngs of visitors, were alike unparalleled. More worth
our notice is the excellence of many special depart-
ments, artistic and mechanical. The scientific collections,
notably the anthropological, and the historical galleries
of the Trocadero, gave increased evidence of advancing
culture : similarly the many specialist congresses, scientific
and economic. Of these some bore immediate fruit, e.g.,
the International Statistical Commission, and the completion
of the Postal Union. With this exhibition it was largely
hoped to conclude the series of general exhibitions, and the
coming exhibition of 1889 has rather been forced by the
advanced Republican party as a celebration of the centenary
of the Kevolution, than developed as a natural outcome of
the industrial condition of France.

Minor exhibitions were held at Moscow in 1882 ; Amster-
dam, 1883 ; and Antwerp, 1885 ; the latter recalling in
many features that of Paris. In Germany, where progress
had not been entirely of the right sort, a considerable feeling
of depression prevailed, owing to the poor appearance and
scanty successes at the Philadelphia exhibition. Their
educational pre-eminence was not only less distinctly marked,
but the quality of products was distinctly lowered, the
Imperial German Commissioner himself characterising them
as "cheap and nasty." More probably from this reason,
than from national jealousy, the Empire refrained from
participating at Paris, in 1878, further than in sending
a small collection of pictures; but confidence has been
reviving since the recent national exhibitions in Berlin,
1879, and other cities. In England, after 1862, a pause
^ooJc place; annual exhibitions were, however, commenced
-B« JS7J, only to die out m 1874, and it vraa ie\t \.\\«A. ^^-e^

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 7

time was fully ripe for a new departure, that of special
exhibitions. Thus, in 1S76, was held an exhibition of
scientific apparatus, historical and modern, and a "Caxton
exhibition" of printing; and henceforth the principle of
exhausting one department, rather than vainly struggling to
accumulate all, may be taken as fairly established. The
primary industries were, of course, amongst the first to
obtain illustration ; thus arose a series of fishery exhibitions ;
forestry, too, has been well rei)resented (Edinburgh, 1884) ;
while the Colonial Exhibition, although nominally general,
mainly belongs to this class. Electricity has been repeatedly
represented, while the recent London "Inventories" and
Liverpool **Shipperies" have done adequate justice to
manufactures and transport. Of higher order and more
pressing utility are the various ** Health" exhibitions
(Brussels, 1876; Berlin, 1882; London, 1884), and it would
be interesting, if space allowed, to trace in these our modem
progress, as being no longer essentially in material appli-
ances, but social in aim. For this series reflects a higher
wave of contemporary progress than do the exhibitions of
mere wealth production ; here the progress of well-being is
no longer proclaimed by a pyramid of gilt nuggets, or a
"trophy" of blacking tins and preserved meat; the ideal
condition of the workman is no longer merely typified by his
attendance upon his machine, nor that of the middle-classes
by a profuse supply of tinsel and refreshments. A new
series of industrial possibilities opens up as the production of
health takes its place beside the production of wealth. The
doctor has been steadily, if slowly, rising to the occasion ;
from barber-surgeons to modem practitioners was no small
step, but these again are dividing into two classes, the
specialists fighting disease in detail, and the hygienists
battling with it wholesale, city by city. The function of
the latter, too, is developing from the simple analysis of
water and sewage, to the initial and consultative side of the
organisation of public works, and even towards regulation
of the whole conditions of industry. Following this, also,
comes the reform of education, and hence the importaac^ ^1
health exhibitions, which not onVj VW.\x&\.T^\fe, \sviJ^ \x«?^west
thhB Bileat and peaceful social revoVutVoxi. A.\.Sa "^"Oc^^ *^^**

8 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

with the health exhibitions our brief -Retrospect should
terminate, since it is from their pinnacles that the main
path alike of contemporary and future evolution is most
clearly to be descried. For Emerson's reproach, that
"things are in the saddle and ride mankind," is rapidly
becoming less true among us.

But what of our minor and provincial exhibitions ? These
are, of course, legion. Exhibitions are a fashion of the
hour. Last year there were not only at least seven or eight
special exhibitions in Europe and America, but three
general international ones ; not only Edinburgh and Liver-
pool, Manchester and Glasgow, must have their inter-
national exhibitions, but Valetta and Thurso, Christiania
and Rio, Kioto and Bogota, have had theirs already ; the
wave has all but literally travelled **from China to Peru."
Regarding the recent Colonial Exhibition as necessarily
chiefly of the 1851 stage, and resulting rather from the
political aim of federation than as a needed expression of
the contemporary industrial movement, what is to be said
of the recent exhibitions of Edinburgh and Liverpool?
From the larger point of view little can be said ; they are
not on the main line of evolution, nor do they claim any
distinct position, or evince any sufficiently definite idea or
aim. There is no doubt much to be said in their praise,
but that has not been wanting ; their most striking interest
to us lies in the perfect way in which they reflect the strong
and weak sides of the community organising them. Thus,
while the Liverpool Exhibition was widely international, as
beseemed a great maritime city, that of Edinburgh was so
in little more than the name, scarcely, indeed, even British,
but acutely provincial — in too many respects, indeed, al-
most parochial — alike in conception and execution. On the
other hand, the profuse vulgarity and monumental ugliness
too common in the Liverpool Exhibition, and which the
noblest exhibits, such as those of Elkiugton or Doulton,
served rather to accent than to redeem, was in contrast
with the comparatively artistic and architectural character
of the Edinburgh show, thanks to the longer tradition of
cuJeare of the latter city. Sections like those of the women's
^ndartisAn induatriea in Edinburgh show alaopei\i\\.«i2i^«ic^ ,

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 9

and will no doubt be developed in proportion as the skilled
handicrafts emerge from the present overflow of mechanical
production beyond its rational bounds. Other higher sides
are not wanting ; some improvement, still much needed and
slow, is observable in the artistic quality of goods ; the art
exhibitions at Edinburgh showed some fair Scottish work,
but which could scarcely fail to be stimulated by contrast
with the almost immeasurably higher and deeper quality of
French and Dutch art, which was for the first time placed
side by side with it. Still more useful was the street of
**01d Edinburgh," as at once stimulating and popularising
the historic spirit, and helping to the recovery of the fallen,
yet highest, art of civilised production of permanent wealth
— that of rational, fitting, and beautiful architecture, civic
and domestic. Best of all were the typical workmen's
dwellings, slums no longer, but genuinely human homes,
spacious and lightsome, with flower-filled windows, and
built with honest old-fashioned mason's marks. The im-
portance of such exhibits is hardly ever realised ; the public
has now for a couple of generations so unquestionably in-
trusted this most essential form of permanent accumulation
of wealth to the incompetent rapacity of the jerry builder,
that the most obvious economic and physiological science is
constantly mistaken for ** sentiment" when it protests, in
the name of every form of real civic progress, against that
" progress of the city " in rapidly bricking over hundreds of
square miles of country with dreary labyrinths of so-called
new streets — too often mere roofless tunnels, leading no-
where save to the factory, and the public-house, the hospital,
and the grave. Such * * progress of wealth and population "
has indeed been dinned into our ears ad nauseam by our
statisticians, optimistic economists, and all the other com-
fortable simpletons who do not live there. It has, perhaps,
also been sufficiently shrieked against by the sentimentalists
and aesthetes who first awakened public attention to it. The
time for action is now ripening, and will fully come in pro-
portion as the hygienist gains and the architect recovers
that place among the organisers of production. ■wKvq.Vj^ ^sjso:
extreme concentration upon tkft taate^ \?c^w^"v\«rc^ va.^sx^^vxv'ss^
has so long withheld from them..

10 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

CHAPTER II.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Exhibitions.

A CONVENIENT, and moreover authoritative statement of
the advantages claimed for industrial exhibitions, is the
retrospect of the results of the Philadelphia Exhibition of
1876,* which may be briefly summarised. Comparison, we
are told, is needed for progress, and to show the effects of
position, climate, race, institutions. An industrial exhi-
bition tells ea ch nation (especially the host) its deficiencies
and errors. In the field of production it impr oves a gricul-
ture, manufactures, and arts (mediate and ultimate), and
also SBstlietic production in all respects. In the department
of social progress it affords the public a substitute for travel,
improves international relations by increasing mutual respect
and solidarity, and removing prejudices, .and in this way
conduces to peace. If we combine such a statement of these
advantages with that of M. Chevalier, President of the
International Jury in 1867, we may consider the case for
exhibitions fairly complete. They increase the knowledge
of natural res ources . Thus it was a surprise to iEe^Americans
lio know that their whole foreign market for cotton might
be supplied by twa per cent, of their available lands, or four
per cent, of the area of Texas alone, and such knowledge is
of distinct importance to the scientific exploitation of the
globe. The improvement of processes and products is again
insisted on, and a stimulus is given to educ ation , both in art
and science. ConSirtSrable s&ess, too, is laid on the impulse
toproduction and the increase of the volume of international

coromfircfi.

Any summary of the advantages of exhibition^ would be
incomplete without a sample of the more enthusiastic pan-

^Jfeport ofPreaident, etc., of Phila, Jlxh. , 1876. (?MAade\\)\ua, \«I^.^

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 11

egyric, of what we may call the 1851 style, but which is still
current in the newspapers after the opening and closing of
every exhibition. Take, for instance, from a leading Paris
newspaper of 1878, the following extract from a leading
article: '* Mutual schools of all countries, they serve alike
for the general and mutual instruction of producers and con-
sumers ; they ensure emulation and progress in all branches
of production, by bringing within the reach of all the com-
plete study of processes, methods, iostniments, machines,
tools, products of arts and trades ; they are a source of
increase of public wealth, develop sentiments of inter-
national brotherhood, dismiss the mutual jealousies of pro-
ducers in diflferent countries ; they increase exportation,
and thus furnish a better argument for free-trade than the
most eloquent manual of economics; while, finally, these
great festivals, manifestations of the state of civilisation of
all peoples, the proofs, indeed, the apotheosis of labour and
genius, being only possible under conditions of certain
peace, make the desire of peace arise in all hearts, which
must needs seek the means of maintaining it," and so on,
with a thousand variations.

After eloquence of this sort, one is ready to listen more
patiently to the other side. Granting, say the critics of
exhibitions, that the primary industries are stimulated still
further out of proportion to all others, how far is this a
public gain, exciting, as it does, the popular imagination to
more and more feverish productive enterprise, and increas-
ing that glorification of material resources, which is as
marked and mischievous a habit of the< British, and still
more of the American mind, as is the pride of military
resources of the German ; and, with regard to the boasted
improvement of products, is it not as much in the direction
of the showy as of the useful ? As to the healthy rivalry
for excellence, how often are the articles simply manufac-
tured for the jury and the visitors, and how far are the jury
examinations and awards of any real value, save for impress-
ing those who overlook the steadily increasing proportion
from one in five in 1798, to more than one in two at Paris in
1878 ? At Edinburgh recently , the iax^i^ vcA^^^ n« <sq^» ^^ \an:
U8 to grant nine awards to aa maii^ eiNxife>\\& ol\i\>ss^KCT^5cafe

12 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

damask alone. It is urged, too, that these international
comparisons tend to destroy healthy individuality of local
products, and to check the tendency towards national divi-
sion of labour. Be this as it may, the enormous expenditure
on transport, both of persons and goods, cannot be considered
as other than unproductive ; while the increase of retail
business lies notoriously as much in stimulating the sale of
mere gewgaws to holiday-makers, as in the distribution of
useful products. We hear much of this '* stimulus to trade ; "
and it is at least instructive to learn that the social organism,
unlike the bodily one, is always benefited by an indisciminate
use of stimulasts. We are assured, too, that this stimulus
is eflfective on labourer and capitalist alike. Doubtless ;
but how? To the former the exhibition aflfords employ-
ment. Granted, for the time; but the exhibition is soon
got ready, comes suddenly to an end, and with it most of
the employment ; while the overcrowding, the raised rents
and prices are not so rapidly, if ever, lowered to their former
level. Thus, in Paris in 1878, the eflfect on the working
class was most disastrous ; labour flowed into Paris so fast
that rooms were often divided into three, and each was let
at the full original rent. Prices, too, rose ; then lack of
work and hard times of course followed, and the exhibition
resulted in a serious, and, to -a large extent, permanent
depression of the condition of the already hard-pressed
Parisian labourer.

And let us examine more closely how the exhibition
"encourages trade." We have so much money, which
represents a certain definite quantity of material wealth,
and possible labour. We spend so much of it on a vast
exhibition, a directly unproductive enterprise, a luxury as
much as an opera-house is, and having thus reduced our
available capital, we further reduce it by enormous expendi-
ture on transit, spending money freely at and over the
exhibition. Meanwhile we enlarge our business everywhere,
and start enterprises more or less speculative to boot. But
business was already up to its full margin of safety, as much
on credit as it would possibly bear ; the whole addition, and
even more^ is thus on credit, and this inflated credit must
^/tAer leak out gradually in diffused losses, or Wtat m «i

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 13

crisis, as it did in Vienna in 1873. An exhibition, then,
certainly does stimulate production, but the stimulus is not
of a kind entirely to be desired ; it operates in no small
degree towards accelerating the return and increasing the
violence of the periodic social crises, and the boasted pro-
duction of material wealth thus ends with a wail over the
still more effective production of material poverty. Specu-
lative inflation — crisis — poverty — these are not all. Political
agitation and unrest— social disorder — tend as distinctly to
follow. The social ferment of Paris, Vienna, and now more
lately London, is by no means unconnected with this ; and
it needs little gift of prophecy to see that such will be,
on an unprecedented scale, the fruits of the coming unpre-
cedentedly vast exhibition of 1889, and that its Tower of
Babel may be expected to succeed — as other Towers of Babe)
have done before.

Again, the pretence of technical education is largely a farce ;
the exhibition is alike too vast and too confused for real
popular instruction. Nor, indeed, is this claim now-a-days
seriously maintained, being replaced by the converse and
more admissible claim of its being a place of harmless
public amusement, which competes successfully with the
music-hall and the restaurant. Nor is the establishment of
peace and goodwill any longer generally believed in — war
too surely comes on the morrow. There is little wonder,
then, that an increasing number of thoughtful men should
say, '[This also is vanity." Thus the Saturday Review ^ in
a receitt discourse on the vanity of exhibitions, grants the
Edinburgh exhibition no worse than other ** organised hypo-
crisies" of the same class; scoffs utterly at its awards of
phantom medals and the like, affirming ** advertisement to
be the sole reason of being of such places," declares that ** the
exhibition business is as notorious as the confidence trick
itself, and that if the game is to be played at all, it must be
played under changed conditions and new rules," and con-
cludes that *'the farce is as good as played out, and the
sooner we cease from regarding exhibitions as a civilising
influence, the better it will be for civilisation.*^

Happily, such a criticism, though tem^et»itft«cAx'aiVt^s&issv%
beside the conventional rhapao^^a fi«ni^\%.^\ifc\sst^^Ns^ ^^^

14 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

that of advocate, not judge. Nor will exhibitions perish so
easily, let reviewers thunder as they will : we only destroy
what wo replace by something fitter to survive, and our
dawning era of scientific industrialism cannot dispense with
exhibitions of some sort or other, for industry is striving to
see and know and understand itself, and the sooner the
better. Hence these exhibits of products and processes,
hen CO these innumerable throngs of sightseers, each eager
for his object-lesson in the great school of life. We cannot
work out these things on paper : we must have a general
view of this wealth in the concrete, of those things which
"are in the saddle," were it only to put them back into
their right place — the saddle-bags. Again, people must
have pleasure, and there is no pleasure like that of seeing
the results of our own work. The music would never sound
half so sweet alone, nor the pictures seem half so fair, as
beside the gathered products of our own industry. It is,
indeed, our only modern means of sitting down under our
own vine and the fig-tree which we have planted. tBut it
is the business of the exhibition to anticipate and accelerate
that coming age of scientific industry, and not simply to
conserve the lower phases of wasteful idleness and ignor-
ant competitive struggleTj Nor is even the most obvious
criticism, that against the cheap cosmopolitanism of exhi-
bitions, wholly just. Vague humanitarianism and sham
cosmopolitanism, maudlin and mischievous philanthropy all
over Europe there may indeed be ; but, besides its con-
temptible, it has its hopeful side. This feeling has been
increasing from one exhibition to another, the steam is
getting up which may some day be put to useful work.
Humanitarian energy, like any other, only needs concen-
trated application to become available for rational objects.
The ** parliament of man, the federation of the world,"though
it did not come in 1852, nor in 1878, though not yet
coming in 1889, is **comin* yet for a* that:" nay, small
but definite beginnings, in international committees and
juries, are already made. \Thus, in 1851,^ "for the first

^ Cole: JLectnres to the Society of Arts on the Results of the Great
^ExbJbitlon of 1851, (London, 1852.)

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 15

time in the world's history, men of Arts, Science, and
Commerce were permitted by their respective Governments
to meet together to discuss and promote the objects for
which civilised nations exist. The chief business of poli-
ticians, lawyers, and soldiers is to protect the results of
other men's industry, and up to this time governments,
consisting for the most part of politicians, lawyers, and
soldiers, have had the chief voice in regard to the affairs
of industry. The men of Arts, Science, and Commerce
have hitherto had but a subordinate voice in the regulation
of their own interests. . . . But a new principle was
introduced in the exhibition of 1 851. _[y During this exhibi-
tion, the Postage Association was formed; other results
of it were, besides the exhibition building itself, the
beginning of the reform of our Patent Laws, the establish-
ment of the International Sanitary Congress (Paris, 1852),
and many international hospitalities. Promises, too, were
made to reform the system of weights, measures, and coin-
age, and the Customs and tariffs ; to abolish passports and
restrictions on international intercourse ; to institute an
international copyright and catalogue of printed books, to
establish international commercial laws, and to found an
industrial university.

As to practical counsel, then, it is evident that we

need other than our reviewer's, though his demand for

* * changed conditions and new rules " must be fairly faced.

Above all, it is necessary that he who would educate others

should first educate himself ; and that no such vast enter-

, prise be started without a thoughtful criticism of what has

gone before. A student is wont to credit the practical man

with foresight and consideration, with counting the cost of

an enterprise before he embarks on it; but his respect is

wofully shaken when he discovers that the projectors and

organisers of exhibitions have usually never even seen,

much less collected and studied, the easily accessible, as

well as ample and suggestive, literature of the subject.

. Yet this gross and wasteful carelessness seems to be only

-W-v, too common. rBut the gravest of all preliminary questions

\ is that of ideals ; is it north or south, t\^\\\» ore \fe\\»^ xi:^ ^^

^ down, that we are to tend ? Aie -we ^e\,\,Ssi%QvxX» ^^ \is^«» «2i^

16 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

progress or degeneracy ? What are our aims ? Science and
Art?. So say Bamum and Madame Tussaud. Industry
and Social Progress ? So said our Parisian newspaper. It
is easy to promise these things, but to get them is by no
means so easy. What is the use of *' doing' like our
neighbours," of squandering the limited resources of a
second- or third-sized city on artificially working up a mere
feeble reflection of the great wave that echoed round the
world a generation ago, of so elaborately seeking '* advan-
tages to industry," of which not a few are either imme-
diately, or in the long-run^pure disadvantages, both to
jndu stry and social pr og ress^ On the other hand, what a"
possibility, too splendid to come more than once in a life-
time, is before the organisers of an exhibition, of making
what shall be an Exhibition of the truest progress, in public
health, and in public wealth — and those in the largest
senses. Not simply as Colbert did, for the seventeenth
century ; or Turgot, for the eighteenth ; or the men of
1861, for the nineteenth ; but better, for the fortunes of the
twentieth lie in their hands, rtn organising such an ideal
exhibition, not only producer, but consumer; not only
capitalist, but artisan ; not only artist, but thinker, must
have a say, and bear a hand. J Let us glance, therefore,
briefly at some of the practical possibilities of the case.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 17

CHAPTER III.
Pkactical Possibilities of Exhibitions.

The difficulties in the way of improving on exhibitions
are, it must be admitted, partly moral. It is easy and
delightful, in opening addresses and after-dinner speeches,
to rise to an enthusiasm of progress far beyond the level
of the ordinary caterers for popular amusement, and to
promise more public spirit than has yet been evinced by
any financial syndicate ; but the best-intentioned of our
industrial chiefs or city fathers, when the fortunes of an
exhibition are once intrusted to their care, will find it no
easy task to keep up to the heights of vision reached during
these preliminary flights of eloquence. It is so tempting to
decide the continually recurring struggle between what is
best and what will pay best by assuming the favourite
axiom of so many economists, that the latter includes the
former, as the greater does the less. A gain to industrial
processes, to technical education, to civic progress in any
form, would, moreover, hardly be estimable at the closing
of the exhibition. How much better a surplus which the
newspapers can mention with approval next morning !
Look, for instance, at the ''successful results" of the Edin-
burgh Exhibition. Did it not leave behind it — a ** surplus"?
What such a practical and material view really means — viz.,
that out of a total expenditure of labour represented by,
say, a couple of thousand "man-years," there now remains
as material residue only a heap of building materials, plus a
few thousand pounds which nobody can agree how to get
rid of — is not, of course, considered : no one dax^ ^s65aws2«»
such ** results " without incunm^ ^'& xc^x^i^.^ Q?L\5fcVEk55^ "esv
economic Jeremiah. TYie moTa\ eaSvcvxVc^ ^a cots^'^s^'^^^

18 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

too, with a practical one ; wish as one may for improved
processes, for industrial education, for social progress, it is
hard to see how to get them ; urgent practical details absorb
every one's attention from the outset, and thus our ideal
exhibition falls practically out of mind. Plan and organisa-
tion alike pass into the hands of simple officials, upon whom
established precedent and desire of pecuniary success press
with doubled weight. The "trophies," tinsel, and music-
hall elements soon assert themselves, in season and out of
season, while the higher questions silently vanish ; however,
an unparalleled blaze of electric light is turned on, the
champion brass band strikes up, the crowd pours in, the till
is filled, the reporters are in ecstasies, and the exhibition is
*'a complete success." That its essential objects have been
shelved for the future, much more that what we saw to be
the crisis-making factors of the exhibition have been re-
tained, while the progress-making factors have been allowed
to remain undeveloped, is entirely lost sight of.

The initial problem is that of clear arrangement — of
classification : and here again a brief historic retrospect will
be of service. The unimportant early French exhibitions
were mainly geographical in plan, but in 1809 the increase
of detail compelled sub-division; as 39 "natural" heads,
however, were adopted, the result is said to have been con-
fusing. By 1827 the classification had become "purely
scientific," i.e. into chemical, mathematical, physical,
economic, and miscellaneous ! Science so pure being found
"too artificial and abstract," the shows of 1834 and 1839
were arranged by Dupin from a more practical point of view,
that of the relation of the arts to man, the heads being
"alimentary, sanitary, vestiary, domiciliary, locomotive,
sensitive, intellectual, preparative, and social." In 1844
and 1849 a partial compromise of this with the productive
point of view was made, and in 1851 this latter aspect
became pre-eminent. As this classification has largely
influenced succeeding ones, the names of its thirty classes,
themselves, of course, sub-divided, deserve citation :
(I) Raw material and produce: mining, chemistry, food,
vegetable and animal material. (2) Machinery: transport,
maolilnes, and toola, engineering, architecture, and V>\xildm%,

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 19

naval architecture, military engineering, agricultural imple-
ments, philosophical instruments. (3) Manufactures : cotton,
wool, silk, flax, leather, paper, weaving, tapestry, clothing,
cutlery, hardware, precious metals, glass, pottery, decora-
tion, furniture, mineral decorations, miscellaneous manu-
factures, animal and vegetable materials, miscellaneous.
(4) Fine arts. This method was unaltered in 1862, though
a few processes obtained separate representation ; but many
changes were introduced in Paris in 1867, underlying the
peculiar advances already mentioned as made at that
exhibition. The groups were : (1) Fine arts. (2) Material
and application of the liberal arts (printing, photography,
medicine, etc.). (3) Furniture and domestic appliances
of all kinds. (4) Clothing and personal appliances gener-
ally. (5) Raw materials. (6) Appliances and processes
of the mechanical arts. (7) Alimentary products. (8) Agri-
culture. (9) Horticulture. (10) Appliances of physical and
moral progress of .'population. The subject was re-con-
sidered by the projectors of the American Centennial
Exhibition, who largely based their scheme upon the
preceding, but laid down as the essential principle to group
together (1) raw materials, (2) manufactures and products,
(3) means and appliances of the preceding, (4) resultant
effects of such productive activity ; and claimed that this
classification is not only '* natural and simple, but calculated
to show more effectively than any other system the develop-
ment of man, the progress of the arts and of civilisation."
Ten departments were arranged : raw materials, manu-
factures, textiles, furniture xind domestic appliances, tools,
motor machines and processes, transport, education, engineer-
ing and architecture, fine art, physical, intellectual, and
moral improvement. These ten groups were each somewhat
arbitrarily divided into ten classes ; the exhibits in each
group occupied a longitudinal band of fl6or space, while the
exhibits of each country could be followed along a baud at
right angles, an arrangement also recalling that of the
Parisian model.

The great exhibition of 1878 somewhat modified "^afc O^saa^-
sification of 1867, the groups \>emg •. V^i T\3aft ks\s^ v^^^ ««2!^-
claaaea), (2) Education, appaxatu^ as^^ ^xci^«e»&% ^'^ '"^'^

20 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

liberal arts (eleven sub-classes). (3) Furniture and acces-
sories (thirteen sub-classes). (4) Textiles, clothing and
accessories (thirteen sub-classes). (5) Mining industries,
raw and manufactured products (seven sub-classes). (6) Ap-
paratus and processes of the mechanical industries (nineteen
sub-classes). (7) Alimentary products (seven sub-classes).
(8) Agriculture and pisciculture (nine sub-classes). (9) Hor-
ticulture (six ; total, ninety sub-classes). This scheme is to
be substantially adhered to in 1889.

This general view shows us that while the arrangement of
sub-classes has no doubt been developed in detail, the large
features of all classifications still mainly arise from the
industrial bias of France and England in artistic and primary
industries respectively. Is it not possible to retain all the
advantages, yet to arrange our industrial museum in a more
instructive and intelligible way ? The two essential points
of view already insisted on are also seen to influence all
classifications ; those on the 1851 lines favour the progress
of industrial processes, whUe those of the French type are
more adapted to aid the higher aspect of industry, i,e, the
ultimate products and the social progress which all processes
exist to subserve.

Our ideal exhibition should unite both ; every exhibition,
in fact, does so to some extent, and the problem really
comes to be that of laying down that general outline of
economic processes and results, within which every exhibi-
tion, general or special, is included, and of which it is a
more or less complete or partial realisation. And in propor-
tion as such a scheme is truly scientific, it will differ from
existing ones, not in any far-fetched principle or complexity
of detail, but merely in systematising their common-sense,
and so reaching greater simplicity and unity, with easier
applicability to purposes practical and instructive. Our
1851 classification, and that of Philadelphia, finds its justifi-
cation in broadly following the stages of production, viz. :
exploitation, manufactures, transport, and trade ; yet how
much more instructive had this scheme been followed out
in detaiL The general problem of production must be
kept clearly in view. This we may state as it is tersely
samnmrised by Jevona : " Given a certain populsAion^

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 21

with various needs and powers of production, in pos-
session of certain lands and other sources of material ;
required the means of utilising this labour which would
maximise the utility of the produce.'* And, first of all,
the problem of exploitation, of extractive industries, of ^
getting hold of our resources, of realising our estate in
short, is successfully treated by no means in proportion to
the vastness and heterogeneity of the piles of raw material
which lumber up our exhibitions to so little purpose, but
lies in a careful stock-taking of our resources, actual and
latent. This part of the plan is primarily for the geographers
and statisticians; and a series of well-coloured maps and
wall diagrams, compiled by these, require only a set of
illustrative and verificatory samples of the raw materials.
The whole of this could be kept within limits of cost and
space far less extravagant than is customary, yet be ten
times more instructive, and even more popularly interesting, .
than we ever see. Of course this part of the arrangement
of an exhibition is being increasingly well done ; yet it is
not needless to call attention to the desirability of doing it
better. Thus, in the Edinburgh Exhibition, there was no
real attempt to answer the fundamental economic inquiry —
what are the resources of the country? Coal heaps belonging
to rival merchants there were, certainly, and in abundance ;
but for an estimate of the mineral wealth of the country and
of its various districts one sought in vain. Yet the
Geological Survey, the Geographical Society, and the Society
of Arts were all at hand ; their help might readily have been
secured had a real exhibition been seriously wanted ; but as
the general circular brought in chance samples by the cart-
load, the services of science were not pressed for. The
other great departments of exploitation, agriculture in its
many branches, and fishery, have, of course, their special
exhibitions; yet no general exhibition should fail to place
before its visitors at least some clear reminder and diagram-
matic abstract of their respective importance in the national
economy. To the agricultural shows may safely be lett^fcs^
latest reaping machine and the ^tVl^ -^K^", \sx>.\»*'^N.^^^^*^'*'
projectora of a great exhibition to %et. \ife\.ox^ ^JJ^:^^ ^"^. 'V
especiaUy at this period oi cxiaia m^i ^wV^es^^^^^^ ^^^

\2Ck.

22 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

agriculture, an impartial summary of the existing state of
things. This, again, might have been done with peculiar
fitness in Edinburgh, as the centre of what is, or used to be,
the most fertile and well- cultivated region in Europe, and
the seat of the Highland and Agricultural Society, to whose
labours the creation of that fertility is so largely due. A set
of statistical maps and diagrams would have given the
general public and its law-givers that outline of existing
facts so much needed in this period of impending legislation,
but which they cannot obtain from the party press, and will
not from the more ponderous sources. Doubtless, however,
the wall space was required for advertisements. At any
rate, the organisers are always townsmen, not to say some-
thing of Cockneys, and organise their show out of the
familiar town industries accordingly ; hence the representa-
tion of agriculture comes in all exhibitions alike to fare but
ill, and a splendid opportunity of aiding the cause of applied
science in many departments is thrown away. From every
point of view, indeed, agriculture deserves a foremost place ;
historically its stages are those of civilisation, practically it
s of all industries most important to general prosperity;
and thus, whether we are to arrange for the frescoes and
statuary of the grand hall of our exhibition, or the disposal
of its sewage, the importance of agriculture cannot pass
unrecognised without injuring the whole.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 23

CHAPTER IV.

Practical Possibilities — Arrangement.

But It is time to pass from agriculture to manufactures.
The vastness of this court of our exhibition renders some
general idea even more indispensable than before, and, for-
tunately, this is not far to seek. In all times, and in all
countries, the essential industries are the same ; the infinite
division of labour which characterises our time is nothing
more than a development of that of the savage ; nothing
generically new has ever been introduced, for what seems
new is but a differentiation of the old. Defence from brute
and human enemies provided for, the first task of savage
industry is to obtain food, the next to get a garment for
warmth, and to construct a shelter for the night; while,
subservient to these industries of direct or ultimate utility,
those of indirect or mediate utility, i.e. tool-making and
porterage, soon arise. A rough division of labour, at first
conditioned by sex, exists also from the beginning, and of
this all our subsequent complexity is a development. The
passage from the hunting to the pastoral phase involves a
complication of the same essential industries ; that to the
agricultural state differentiates them further, tool-making
and transport develop into vaster and vaster importance,
and react upon the ultimate industries, and the modem
world thus begins to open out before us. Our era of modem
industry is marked by the same two features as the earliest 1
one, increasing command of fire and marked progress of the
tool ; and its associated enthusiasm of steam and electricity,
of mechanism and invention, which seem so <i\:^^x«j5i\.OTs^<As»^
modem, is but a repetition, mt'h. metfe Oaaxk%^ ^V'Sss^sgia^
and ritual, of the>ntique worsbiip oi'PTOTftfe'Os^eNi^- ^'^''''

24

INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

and the tools/* men sing in one age ; in another they read in
Indtistries, or the like, of energy and its applications.

This idea may seem too general for practical purposes, yet,
like every true generalisation, it may at once be carried into
detaiL We may, in fact, lay it down in short tabular form.

Retrospective.

Actual.

Prospective {Inventions, etc).

Tool-making.

Transport.

Shelter.

Clothing.

Aliment.

Struggle.

Further clearness is reached if we separate, as is, indeed,
commonly done, only the general modes of utilising energy,

Exploitation.

MANX7FAUTUKE.

Products.
(a) Mediate.
(5) Ultimate.

Sources of
energy.

Apparatus and processes of
utilisation of energy (prime
movers, etc.).

(a) Mediate
products (his-
torical retro-
spect of evo-
lution of the
tool, etc.).

Materials of
transport.

Apparatus and processes of
tool-making in widest sense
(mechanicalengineering,etc. ).

Apparatus and processes of
transport.

Materials of
shelter.

Apparatus and processes of
constructive arts.

(6) Architec-
ture, furni-
ture, decora-
tion, etc.

Materials of
clothing.

Apparatus and processes of
vestiary arts.

Clothing.

Materials of
aliment.

Apparatus and processes of
alimentation.

Food.

^ soi/ arrange the variona mechanisms witVi tVv^ social in-
dnairfes to which they respectively "belong;; aacA ^^loaa

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 25

arrangement, so far from necessarily excluding an historical
survey, rather facilitates it, since the history of every in-
dustry is worked out by, and consequently written in, the
tools it makes use of. On one side, too, we may now add
the department of exploitation, which assumes a new clear-
ness when arranged beside the processes it exists to sub-
serve ; nor do its own natural sub-divisions interfere with
completeness of parallelism, since the sources of energy and
the raw material of construction are mainly furnished by
mining, and those of alimentation and clothing by agricul-
ture and fishing. On the other side run the ultimate
products of the various industries, the fine arts going, of
course, with the constructive.

That this scheme is at once simple and natural will not
probably be disputed, while its applicability to practice
becomes evident when we note that it simply amounts to a
reconciliation of the differences and a combination of the
advantages of the French and English types of classification.
In fact, these various styles of classification are best under-
stood by simply going through the preceding ground-plan in
different directions ; and further, it is thus that, so far as
production is concerned, the facts of past (exhibitions are
best pigeon-holed in our memory. Here, of course, one
court has to be enlarged, and there another left vacant; but
the general principle is none the less universal. The objec-
tion may be made that this interferes with the geographical
arrangements ; and so far this is an advantage. There is no
reason why a Japanese machine, for instance, should not be
placed with other machines of its class, wherever they come
from. French wines, Japanese ware, and every other
natural genus of product would be kept together as much as
formerly ; but one would find each in its proper place,
among its congeners of all countries. The comparative [
technological uselessness of most great exhibitions is, per-
haps, more largely attributable to the confusion which the y
national principle introduces than to any other single de-
fect, for forty bazaars will never make one museum. All
the real claims of national distinctness ax^ q^q^^a ^^^^a^yaaii^i^
met by using tickets printed "WitYi \^i^ TL•a^A!Q►xisi^. q^csqx^>^^^
placing the objects in the same i^coTLNemeo^s.-^ ^-^wi^^'^^:*^^^

26 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

national succession in every court ; while the interests of
cosmopolitanism, free-trade, and the like, would be served
less, perhaps, by eloquent protestations over an unwieldy
agglomeration of petty rival shows, like the booths at a
fancy fair, but in reality far more by the simple common -
sense method of recognising no diflference between an exhi-
bitor from one town and an exhibitor from any other. Nor
would there be any real loss to picturesqueness or variety,
since the national styles of architecture and decoration
would be exhibited in their proper places, and the possibility
of the appropriate decoration of each court would only then,
indeed, render real variety possible.

Another practical necessity, in the interests of utility and
beauty alike, is the total abolition of the " trophy ** system
of exhibits, and the substitution of the simplest possible
show-cases, uniform for each ' class of goods, and placed in
regular rows upon the ground-plan. It is surely unneces-
sary to argue at length for this indispensable step towards
making any department of production intelligible to nine-
tenths of the visitors whom it is desired to instruct, or to
show that the ends of progress are better served by letting
the excellence of each article speak for itself than by dis-
playing it with all the borrowed magnificence of a gaudy
frame ; or, finally, to insist on the possibility of giving that
degree of beauty and variety to the exhibition, which is
certainly one of its chief attractions to visitors, in some way
at once less wasteful and less absurd than by encouraging
exhibitors to make themselves ridiculous by arranging their
products in ways which unconsciously, yet absolutely, repeat
in constructioD and colour alike the primary aesthetic efforts
of infancy. The spectacle of not only gro'^^'n men, but intel-
ligent chiefs of industry, naively working up their contribu-
tions to a museum of production into the exact likeness of
the ornaments made in every kindergarten, is as instructive
from an educational and anthropological point of view as it
is grotesque from the artistic or the utilitarian. But since
the total disappearance of the trophies is hardly to be looked
for, so long as the majority of exhibitors and organisers
ali'Ire hare not gone through this phase of juvenile educa-
tj'on, ji ia well to console ourselves with sucla. poasv\i\\\^\ft^ oi

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 27

instruction as are unintentionally open to us. That an
exhibition, too, should help to render clear to us something
of the amount, and still more of the mechanism of exchange
as well as production, is clearly desirable. The illustration
of trans^rt, though still too much in the early phase of
showing only ship-models or real locomotives, has been at
least fairly attempted, especially at Liverpool ; but the
** beautiful complexity and secretiveness of British trade"
still await attempts at their exposition, in line with the
other industrial processes. Unlike transport, the subject,
if treated at all, cannot be smothered by mere material
exhibits. A model ship may satisfy most people's desires
for information as to transport ; but the best display of
office stationery would hardly be accepted as explanatory of
trade. The subject is one peculiarly for graphic statistics ;
but the periodic curves of general crisis or local depression,
for instance, might have unpleasant associations if written
too legibly upon the wall. How far such an exposition of
commercial mechanism is practically possible on one hand,
as, on the other, how far any industrial exhibition can be
complete without it, are inquiries which would lead us far
beyond the present limits.

It may seem time to pass from the industrial processes
altogether to the arrangement of the ultimate industrial
products ; yet before this arises the question of the organisa-
tion of labour. Here, however, though the processes of
industry are constantly treated by the economist from the
point of view of the division of labour, our exhibitions are
usually deficient. The "Galerie de Travail," which is so
interesting a feature of most exhibitions, certainly gives
some idea of the division of labour in detail ; but for
adequate public instruction more must be done. The essen-
tial historical retrospect of production is, of course, an
illustration of the increasing division of labour; but the
progressive concentration of labour also needs illustration,
not so much in increased number of workers, but in that
complexity of co-ordination of different processes which is
now setting in, and of which such arts as ship-building^
engineering, etc., furnish saVient ^■xa.TK^'ft^. '^^a evjOsx^oJsvs.
of the factory into a complete md\3La\.r^ \.o^\i.>SKA Cx^^^*^*^

i

'^

28 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

or Essen, and the setting forth in detail the vast mechanism
which the marvellous co-ordinating power of a Schneider or
a Krupp is able to organise and hold together, would be an
exhibit of supreme importance ^ for technical education, in a
form of which we hear far too little — that of the capitalist
himself. For in industry as in war, it is not even the
quality and quantity of the rank and file that, on the whole,
decides the victory, but the degree of generalship ; and since
the pressure of competition has brought the problem of
educating the workman as a specialist clearly before us, it
is not less needful to bear in mind the corresponding neces-
sity of educating the master as a generaliser.

1 This was, in fact, largely shown by Schneider and Krupp at Paris
(1878) and Berlin (1882) respectively.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 29

CHAPTER V.

Industrial and Technical Education.

Industbial education, scientific and technical, in its more
general aspect, as being no less needed for the industrial
captain himself than for the rank and file, is still far too much
neglected among us. This involves, not only that master
and man alike should know the detailed practice and the
scientific rationale of their special art or manufacture, if they
would not be beaten in the struggle for existence with those
who do, but also demands some knowledge of the wider
bearings of their industry ; some consciousness of their per-
sonal place and function in the general economy, domestic,
civic, and national ; some idea, in short, of their economic
powers and duties. "We are prone to think little of this ;
yet, so strange is human nature, that an ounce of enthusiasm
and manly pride, whether in art or war, has always been
worth a pound of technical knowledge. And thus, while
duly noting what definite profit may be fairly expected from
each improvement in technical processes or organisation, we
should do well to bear in mind what the history of every
great industrial community shows, be it Liibeck or Nurem-
berg, Ghent or Milan, Bruges or Venice, namely, that in-
dustrial success depends no less on immaterial than material
factors ; and that this varies not so much with the natural
advantages, or even the technical skill and scientific know-
ledge of each competing community, as with the breadth of
economic and political vision, and the depth of social feeling
of its citizens. The history of the fortune and fate of these
industrial communities, like the progress oi ca»: ^^htcl ^^
present, is like a voyage ; lor the co\ure& \a ^oLa^ TkB^OckSt \s^
the size or build or cargo of the bYA^, liOT Xyj \Xift\sssas^Q«t ^^.

30 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

the crew, but lies at the mercy of every wind of doctrine,
of every current of moral temperature, of every unseen rock
of accident, save in so far as these are provided against by
skilled captaincy and manful steering. It is true that many
a political economist, with his legitimate interest as purser's
clerk in the bulk of the cargo, and his statistical numbering
of the hands, and parsimonious reckoning of wages at ^^ what
will maintain the labourer," has been accustomed to deride
all those essentials of seamanship as ^^mere sentiment ;" or,
when put on the defensive, to excuse his position by feebly
protesting that **all this is beyond his province," that "ho
cannot hope to become a specialist." In proportion, how-
ever, as history and the sciences, morals and statesmanship,
widen our economic vision ; in proportion, for instance, as
we learn wherein and why (despite all our advantages) our
modem cities are still far behind many of these mediaeval
ones, our educational ideals for labourer and for capitalists
must surely rise ; meantime, the exhibition affords a unique
opportunity of at least preparing for this. It is not needful
to confuse economics with morals, yet perfectly certain that
if we do injustice to one we are also doing injustice to the
other. We are perfectly at liberty, for instance, to consider
our labourers from the physical standpoint as machines or
** hands," but not to reason superficially about them as well,
as if it did not pay to keep and perpetuate the best machines
— that is where the immoral comes in, and with it the un-
economic too.

Parallel to the vast physical processes of industry, let us
map out our producers as organised for labour — classify their
occupations in short. This doubtless seems, at first sight,
of little interest, a mere census ; but a census of occupations,
when rationally, not alphabetically, arranged, teaches us
more than would at first appear. Group the producers, like
their products, according to exploitation, manufactures,
transport, and trade, and divide these again into their
respective sub-classes, and one sees at once the strength of
the various industrial brigades, and of their companies ;
estimate, too, the next great class, that of "servicers" —
persons engaged, thsA is to say, in personal services, whether
bodily, or mental, or aocial ; estimate, in ttve tYikdi ^^aA%>

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 31

that vast and miscellaneous class who agree only in being the
social ** creditors, " i.e. in diminishing, not increasing, the
wealth produced by the other two classes, and who thus
include not only the criminal and the disabled, but the occupa-
tions (legal, medical, etc.) to which these give rise ; and not
only the "unemployed" by misadventure, but by refusal,
whether this be due to the ignorance or apathy of well-
merited poverty or of ignoble wealth. These three classes
of occupations set before us, in a far more important way
than do the more popular statistics of income, the real wealth
and strength of the community, and, more than this, its
possibilities of improvement and of change. We begin to see
how the industrial health and wealth of the mediaeval city
was in such large measure due to the guild organisation, which
kept before each man his own place and duty, and set before
him also the relative place and usefulness of his neighbour's
work ; thus rendering impossible that miserable view of life
so characteristic of our own day, and which we need not so
much good intentions as wider social knowledge to dispel ;
that simply of " Number One," isolated amid an unintelligible
confusion of activities, in which there is nothing better than
to snatch as many of the current counters and tokens as one
can — the crude conception, or, rather, misconception, which
lies not merely at the bottom of the old mercantile theory,
but has to be got over by every man separately, and upon
which the faintest comprehension, not only of our exhibition,
but of the whole of life, depends — that of "making money,*'
as opposed to "producing wealth." This is, in short, not
only the moral, but the intellectual, "ass's bridge" of
political economy.

Useful survivals of the old "regime" of industry, from
which a boy often learned more of this general truth and
of his special place in industry than men do now, were
picture-books descriptive of the various crafts and trades.
Our exhibition should aflford the developed equivalent of
this : it should set forth, in practice where possible, but at
any rate in simple pictorial diagram upon its walls, the
essential processes of the various crafts and industries. Ol
course it will be urged that tViia <iO\3\^ Tio\.\»^ ^<5PCia VstNajSs^
of artists, or by reason of expense •, \>\x.\. ^ti^ OTia^V^^Nsva'^^^s^

32 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

occasion to look into the matter of public and mural decora-
tion, knows not only that artists are spoiled for lack of such
tasks, but that the younger ones would be glad and proud
of the opportunity. Moreover, there is hardly a house-
painter graining oak, or producing sickening mimicries of
marble, who could not help, in at any rate a subordinate
capacity, with such a task ; the invaluable mural paintings
which preserve the life of ancient Egypt needed no skill
beyond the reach of the average artisan — and, for that
matter, the magic-lantern enables one adequately to transfer
a tracing or a photograph to a wall without any previous
pictorial training. Again, the passion for advertising might
(under due guidance of a '* hanging committee") be in this
way allowed judicious outlet; the leading soap-makers
would doubtless gladly contribute an excellent representa-
tion of their processes, while the claims of mustard or
matches to public attention might be graphically set forth
with a freshness exceeding, even for purely advertising
purposes, the hackneyed reiteration of the maker's name
alone. The proposal, in short, is everywhere to supple-
ment, as far as possible, the mere exhibition of inanimate
products by graphic illustration of processes — that is to say,
to apply to our museums of production the graphic illustra-
tion now everywhere admitted to be necessary (and largely
in active progress) throughout museums in general. The
same methods may, of course, even more simply be applied
to the purposes of illustrating the mechanical or physical
principles underlying the respective processes ; while the
elementary economic conceptions, starting from the division
of labour, as has been before pointed out, would be for the
first time vividly popularised.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 33

CHAPTER VI.

THE ORGANISATION OF INDUSTRY.

The various relations of capital and labour, and their
different modes of adjustment, can nowhere be so well
compared, and their respective advantages set forth, as at
an exhibition. At present we have many and various
relations between capital and labour ; but these are, un-
happily, only actively discussed in times of strike or arbitra-
tion, in superficial and transient, even when not one-sided,
columns of the newspapers, or, at best, either scattered in
economic papers or heterogeneously compiled in such a
volimie as that of the recent Industrial Remuneration Con-
ference. Seeing the enormous friction and waste of wealth
which such unsettled relations involve, it would surely be
worth our while to spare some little space (a small room,
with tables and a few book-shelves, is all that is required)
for the definite and statistical exposition of typical cases of
the actual history and present state of the relations of
capital and labour in the various occupations. Economists
and journalists, masters and workmen alike, speak as if the
state of relations in any one industry were much the same
as in others, whereas the various occupations are at planes
of progress years, nay sometimes perhaps whole generations,
apart.

In some occupations, strikes are of constant occurrence ;
and these differ as widely as wars in duration and tenacity,
in degree of waste and exasperation. In other industries,
strikes are almost unknown, yet for very different reasons ;
sometimes the worker is depressed too near the margin of
bare existence to have any fight in him, and too undeveloped
for any hope of combination, even if he Vkaji.\ %<3«\!^«cssnr».^
happily, the age of battles aeem^a o^er, ^\. \^^siX» "^ ^%svsy^;s^
modm Vivendi has been arranged. TV^e dfe^^«^ '^''^ ^xvi5ig^«*s»

c

34 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

in this respect, in short, differs from one occupation to
another perhaps even more widely than does the status and
well-being of the worker. And for that matter, too, the
capitalist is not a mere colourless shadow, always the
same, as in the conventional economic text-book, but a man
very similar to those he employs ; varying widely, however,
from occupation to occupation, as well as from individual
to individual, through an enormous range of moral and
social progress, which is not easily realised without con-
trasting, in some detail, the coarse mastership of a century
ago with one's ideal of a century hence. Representatives
well-nigh of both extremes actually exist side by side
amongst us ; and so long as the slop tailor and his slaves on
the one hand, and the great brewer or engineer, shipbuilder
or decorator and his prosperous workmen on the other,
present us with types of men and manners so widely con-
trasted, it is surely needful to study and treat their respective
cases separately and in detail. Then, too, let not only the
diflferent industries — say coal-mining and damask -weaving —
learn their relative levels on the ladder of evolution, but
let trades-unionist and co-operator each enunciate his case.
Let one master set forth his sliding-scale and another his
plan of profit-sharing, and so on ; let amicable conferences
be arranged, and their results printed in abstract. In this
way, were but the economist allowed the humblest voice in
the arrangements of a single exhibition (of course after the
superior claims of the American bar and the Indian jugglers
had all been disposed of), so far as to be granted the disposal
of a committee-room for a month, as definite a step might
be made towards reaching the ultimate industrial order as
by all the strikes and lock-outs in the city for a dozen years.
But he would doubtless have a difficulty in satisfying the
finance committee that the gate-money would appreciably
be increased by so unconventional an undertaking : the
proposal is therefore, doubtless, too visionary for serious
discussion, and it is needful to take up the argument from
before this digression.

The organisation of processes and labour being for the

£rst time clea,r}y set forth together, the question of the effect

of the work upon the worker would natutaW^ c^oxcii^ \rg i«t

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 35

treatment. The peculiar risks and the specific effects of
each occupation upon the duration and quality of the
worker's life need much exhibition before adequate heed
is taken of these, even by the workers most concerned ;
yet such reiterated popularisation would strengthen the
hands of the hygienist (who would willingly undertake the
labour), and so save something of that vast waste of wealth
by waste of health, which, even from the most purely
mechanical point of view, is a more serious item of national
loss than any other form of depreciation of machinery. As
scientific ideas slowly filter into the political mind, inquiries
into the "depression of trade" will soon cease entirely to
ignore the simultaneous depression of tradesman and trader.
Here, again, space does not permit detailed exposition, and
it would require the insertion in the present text of much
of that diagrammatic illustration which is demanded for
the walls, to set forth the importance and the perfect
practicability of this proposal. The economic value of
human life, both actual and potential, is, however, a subject
which will richly reward more consideration than it has
yet obtained. In this relation, too, the recovery of waste
products might profitably be considered, especially as it is
usually to the action of these, rather than to the essentials
of a so-called unhealthy process itself, that bad effects are
usually due. For it is not. so much in the rapid and waste-
ful development of new natural resources, nor in the rapid
increase and wasteful employment of an unskilled population,
that the industrial progress of the future will lie ; but rather
in the more economic use of existing resources, and the more
regular employment of a healthier, more developed, and
longer lived community.

36 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

CHAPTER VII.

JUBIES AND THE PRINCIPLES OF JUDGMENT.

After these long preliminaries, we are now ready to deal
with the central feature of the exhibition — the finished
results of industry, the ultimate products themselves. The
raw materials and processes, nay, the whole organisation of
industry, exist for these, and lead up to these, and it is
natural, therefore, that upon their abundance, novelty,
utility, and beauty, as well as upon our skill in arranging
and judging them, the success of our exhibition must, in the
main, depend. The mode of natural arrangement of these,
setting out from the primary wants of aliment, clothing,
and shelter, has already been outlined (see page 24) ; but
the further development of this, as well as the general
principles of critical judgment, requires fuller exposition.
Note, first, the need of such general principles, from the
experience of past exhibitions. The difficulties of judging,
and the invidiousness of awards, were strongly felt in 1851,
and at Paris, in 1855, the president of the exhibition recom-
mended the abolition of both jurors and awards in future !
In subsequent exhibitions, the dissatisfaction of all parties
only increased, and after that of 1867, the commissioners
of the principal countries recommended that no prizes of
any kind be awarded, but that reports on every class of
productions be drawn up and signed by the judges ; and
this plan was adopted in London from 1871 to 1874. At
Vienna the plan of international comparisons was abandoned
altogether, and mere special juries for each country took
their place ; while at Philadelphia, after an unusual degree
of inquiry and discussion, the principle of large juries
awarding gr&dvL&ted medals was abolished aW>^et\v«c, «^d
^SfO judges were paid to attend regularly, coxvsvdet^d 'vadi-

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 37

vidually independent and responsible, and instructed to
furnish signed reports. The award consisted of a uniform
bronze medal with diploma, together with a certified copy
of the judges' report. Here, then, is a certain progress,
although how little this has yet affected minor exhibitions
we saw only too clearly at Edinburgh. Briefly summed, the
modes of judgment have, as yet, been mainly two : either
that of rapid survey by an irresponsible and impersonal,
even if not careless or partial, jury ; and, secondly, by more
detailed criticism by responsible specialists. That the latter
method is an improvement upon the former, is obvious ;
but neither has as yet given, or ever can give, great satis-
faction either to the exhibitors or the public. Yet the social
utility of testing the innumerable products offered to the
public, in some way less slow and wasteful than that of
natural selection alone, is obvious enough ; in fact, we have
here one of the main economic claims of an exhibition to
exist at all, in that it attempts to help the consumer to find
the best article. Raw materials may, indeed, be judged
with tolerable fairness, if we obtain the services of experi-
enced dealers as judges ; but new processes or mechanisms
must appeal from the almost inevitable bias of the judge
towards conservatism of the old or enthusiasm of the new,
to the only real test, that of use. And here the exhibition
affords many opportunities, and might readily be developed
to give more : the various systems of electric lighting, of
gas regulating or gas heating and cooking, of water filtering
and sanitation, are obvious cases which have, indeed, in
variable measure, been actually tested in this way ; and the
principle might, with a little thought, be extended in many
others, from the construction, ventilation, and decoration
of the building, down to the clothing of the employes.
Rival producers might, perhaps, be permitted to submit
their wares to actual test before chosen arbiters and the
public ; but it is questionable how far such duels d outrance
should be encouraged, except, doubtless, in cases where
adulteration or other dishonesty has to be proved or dis-
proved.

That this slow and empmcaX \«.«\, ol \i3afe ^ssfiCL^V^'^^^'e^^^
be to some extent anticipated \>y tVaA, ol Tia.HAnrDaS. Q!c>iCv«»Kv,

38 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

is, of course, generally admitted ; witness the existence of
juries at all. The question thus arises — Can we not diminish
the differences among these rival doctors, by discovering
some common, however broad, basis of agreement, by laying
down some general canons of criticism within which the
various judges may work on special, yet broadly parallel,
lines ? This difficulty, which, as we have seen, is slightest
among raw materials, where shades of utility are easily
recognised, increases as we undertake the study of processes
and mediate products, though we can still appeal on either
side to practical experience and theoretic science ; it
becomes, however, almost bewildering as we enter upon
the field of ultimate products. Here we are met on all
hands by the ancient outcry that "there is no accounting
for taste " ; and if this be so, we must, of course, disband
our juries forthwith. Yet with it our whole exhibition
should logically follow ; for unless our ultimate products
are brought here to be criticised and compared, they have
come simply to be sold, and our incipient museum can never
be more than the mere bazaar it is at present. With raw
materials and processes we were in the comparatively indis-
putable field of science ; but on entering among the ultimate
products of the industries, we are confronted by a new
series of considerations — those of art, in which unanimity
has always seemed hopeless. First, however, let us note
that science and utility must fairly claim a fundamental
voice in the criticism of products : for that food and drink
have primarily to be tested by the analyst before they can
be submitted to the palate, whether of the child or of the
epicure ; clothing criticised by the physiologist, before it
appeals to custom or fashion, to the taste or to the means
of the wearer; and the details of housing scrutinised by
the hygienist before style or beauty is concerned, are con-
siderations all obvious enough to the intelligence, yet,
probably, never so much neglected as has been the case in
the past generation. Food, in short, must be food, clothing
clothing, and houses houses ; the utilitarian is evidently at
the root of the whole matter, and it is little wonder that,
aeeing" that the seathetic factor in production is not only a
merff eostJjr snpersuidition to the fundamental one oi. \x\a\i\.>j.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 39

but tends at best, constantly, to be either crude or unin-
telligibly complex, even when not obviously ugly, formal,
or ostentatious, the utilitarian should often wish to do away
with it altogether. He sees, too, how factories are no
longer built with a Grecian portico, nor chimney stalks
tattooed with childish patterns ; how the beam engine is no
longer supported on wreathed columns, nor the railway
carriage fashioned in the likeness of a stage-coach ; and he
hopes to see science and common-sense spread to the makers
and users of ultimate products as well ; necessaries, and
doubtless comforts, he will admit, but no luxuries. In this
way we can readily understand the view of a German
commissioner at Philadelphia, that works of art do not
properly belong to an industrial exhibition at all — "Ernst
ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst. "

The aesthete is accustomed to meet such extreme views as
those by vague abuse of utilitarians as " Philistine," and to
give vent to his feelings in hard sayings, as that "the
beautiful is more useful than the useful," or that while
"life without industry is guilt, industry without art is
brutality." Our reconciliation must thus evidently begin
with less extreme types. In the first place, the represen-
tative utilitarian is happily less severe ; witness the speech
of the President of the United States at the opening of the
Philadelphia Exhibition in 1876 : "Our necessities have
compelled us to chiefly expend our means and time in
felling forests, subduing prairies, building dwellings, fac-
tories, ships, docks, warehouses, roads, canals, machinery,
etc. etc. Burdened by these great primal works of neces-
sity, which could not be delayed, we yet have done what
this exhibition will show in the direction of rivalling older
and more advanced nations in law, medicine, and theology ;
in science, literature, and philosophy ; and in the fine arts.
While proud of what we have done, we regret that we have
not done more : our achievements have been great enough,
however, to make it easy to acknowledge superior merit
wherever found. " This type of industry, which as we have
seen has given English and Americaxv ^^^\\AaTi&'^^'t'fe.^'=s«^-
nantly utiJitarian character &a coxv^.x^'eX^^V^^Oo.*^^'^^ '^'^Tj^
and Vienna, also however prodwce^ V^^e^ ^"^ Q.QvseKvxsi»x -3

^x*^

40 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

less diverse ; in fact, gives rise to greatly differing habits
and views of life, which curiously recall the distinction
between the Puritan and the Cavalier periods. The dispro-
portionate place given to the primary productive industries
during the dawning age of industry, however inevitable and
even useful it may have been as a brief phase of progress,
tends, like every phase of progress, to claim permanence and
finality ; and the whole end and aim of production — to pro-
vide for consumption, and that for the maintenance and
evolution of the community — becomes lost sight of. Thus
the ultimate products of industry become degraded into the
mere fuel of increased production, and become viewed, not
as the end of production, but as a mere means of more.
Whole generations of conventional economists have accepted
and systematised this sordid view of life — or rather absence
of view ; hence wages are said to be ** what will maintain
the labourer," whatever would evolve the man being "un-
productive consumption." In the name of "progress," we
used to be told, he should minimise all such unproductive
consumption, for is not "capital entirely the result of
saving ? " In this way, the swiftest multiplication of an
unskilled populace who have never acquired even the con-
ception, much less the possibilities, of adequate human life,
because accompanied by an equally swift multiplication of
the apparatus of primary and transitory production alone,
comes to be customarily regarded as "progress of wealth
and population : " and we are thus enabled to see why such
economists as have complacently regarded the utmost star-
vation of civilised life as only a commendable sacrifice to
their idea of increased production, did not even get so far
as to promulgate so obvious and utilitarian an idea as, e,g,y
that of the necessity of national technical education, but left
this and every other step of social progress to the enthusiast
or the philanthropist or the more tardy scientist alone. It
is not too much to say that this doctrine of production has
done far more, not only to retard progress, but to create
difficulties in its way, than would have been possible to any
avowed <7n2sade against culture. The American who went
on building saw-mUlB, not only after he had majde a fortune
^J2d reached old age, but after no mote saw-ToaS^a -wet^

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 41

required, and who excused himself by saying, ** I have had
no education, I have no tastes, I am not interested in any-
thing else ; what can I do but build more saw-mills ? " is
too truly a type of the industrialism of his age; and the
duty of the economist is certainly no longer to extol such
industry as ** productive," nor the saving which provides
capital for it as *' meritorious," but to point out that the
needed revival of industry, and the yet more needed, though
as yet less desired revival of industrial life, alike demand
not the mere building of more mills, to employ more hands
to saw more planks to send to still more distant markets,
but rather that some of the sufficient abundance of existing
planks be better used nearer home. Some have to be fitted
into healthier and more spacious dwellings, some shaped
into better and more permanent household furniture, some,
too, carved into permanent household treasures ; it is thus
that not only health and comfort, skill in production, and
enjoyment in consumption, but material wealth, and even
** saving," in its true form of permanent realised wealth, can
ever be secured among us ; thus it is that " progress in
wealth and population '* may recover the idea of direction,
at present so deficient, and enter consciously upon a truly
upward, although less broad and easy, course.

42 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONDITIONS OF DESIGN AND ART CRITICISM.

The political economist is tardily rising to a conception^
which, it must be confessed, many practical men have
grasped and acted on ever since the great Exhibition of
1851, viz., that art is no less of solid economic importance
than are manufactures or exchange. The South Kensington
collections, the systematic art teaching, and the innumerable
schools of design of the Science and Art Department, how*
ever imperfect their results, are all due to the invaluable
object lesson we then received from our French exhibitors ;
yet while this great industrial movement has now grown far
past the initial stage at which the friendly criticism of the
economic student would have been of most value to it, there
is all the greater need to analyse it intelligently, and so
help to direct it aright. The problem, in short, resolves
itself into the question of how we can aid buyers and sellers
to choose the best products, and how aid the maker to
design and produce still better ones.

The study of the aesthetic element in production, and of
the ** political economy of art," demands not only a rational
theory of aesthetics, but the practical application of it ; and
it is, in fact, from the examination of a museum or exhibi-
tion of beautiful products, and not from any metaphysical
first principles, that our theory should be derived. While
old attempts at aesthetic criticism grappled from the very
outset with the Laocoon itself, only to land the critic in
dire entanglement, of which that statue furnished the fitting
type, a more cautious renewal of the attempt at **account-
jjjgrlor taste " will begin with simpler obiects, "Lfet \v» «k\a.T^,
In fact, with the simpleat of the senses— ^itU U^ftxaX \aa\»

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 43

itself ; this understood, higher forms of taste may be more
intelligible. The utilitarian physiologist and the food
analyst have here first to be put on the jury ; bread and
meat, cakes and ale, bonbons or wine have first to pass
their judgment. More, however, than presence of right
ingredients and absence of wrong ones is needed ; some
flavour is indispensable even for bare digestibility, and the
aesthetic factor is thus given a hold. This granted, a real
scale of aesthetic superiority is ascertainable in every class of
product, from insipid up to delicious ; and though there is
great variety, and though we here and there find individual
peculiarities of taste which are not easily accounted for,
there is no question that our judges, from the simple matters
of baking and confectionery up to such subtleties as tea- or
wine-tasting, can and do fairly distinguish good, better, and
best ; that is to say, we can come to fair agreement over a
standard and scale of sensuous pleasure, i.e. of taste, in fact
of beauty, in which even custom and fashion will disturb us
little. Yet such additional factors already make their ap-
pearance, and as these retain their importance and increase
their complexity when we enter the field of the higher
senses, it is needful to consider them at once. First, then,
legitimate sensuousness may be and constantly tends to be
exaggerated into sensuality. The flavour or pleasant stimu-
lus to digestion then becomes the object of consumption,
perhaps even of life, and wholesomeness and temperance
are alike forgotten. Again, a certain standard of consump-
tion tends to become fixed by habit, irrespective of varying
conditions of climate or occupation, health or age, and new
evils arise. Finally, too, the fixity of habit and the love of
luxury may unite to establish a costly and elaborate, yet
conventional and monotonous, standard of consumption.
We thus reach the too frequent modem beatitude of vulgar
wealth — that of a feast- dinner every day, with its conse-
quences of dulled palate, overworked liver, and no genuine .
enjoyment of any food at all. Finally, beyond and largely
by help of aU these aesthetic aberrations, we not only round
off our theory, but we obtain a bak.%e ol x^VKaTkai^ ^x^si^^iJ^-
We see bow to compile our &ca\e oi ^\fe\«XAs» \» "^^ ^^^^^^
faction of the physiologist ; Tciow to xe^ii^ «e^^ '^^tj V^ ^^^

44 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

a due background of simplicity to the satisfaction of the
trained yet healthy palate ; and, finally, how to admit the
claim of the moralist and economist for due moderation of
the amount and due application of the energies of what we
consume.

Following the same simple lines, which run through the
whole field of aesthetics, we may now safely proceed to the
examination of all other classes of products. Thus, in
clothing, the infinitude of complexity may be rapidly
analysed. From the mere covering and crude ornament
of the savage we can pass to study the differentiation of
materials and of costume. The former are influenced not
only by colour and texture, but by qualities of surface, like
those of silk or velvet, which appeal at once to touch and
sight; the latter not only by these primary aesthetic con-
siderations, nor even by the fundamental needs of climate
and occupation, but are peculiarly liable, on the one hand
to exaggerate into vulgar or sensual forms the legitimate
sensuous enhancement of physical beauty at which all cos-
tume to some extent aims, and on the other, to smother this
beneath a mere useless, yet costly, accumulation of survivals
of past fashions or obsolete adaptations to use. These lines,
then, enable us to interpret the history of costume : from
the skin and beads of the savage up to the perfect drapery
of the Greek gentleman, or the resplendent mail of the
mediaeval knight, the union of utilitarian and aesthetic evolu-
tion is clear and unbroken ; while, again, the modem cos-
tume of the sexes often requires for its interpretation the
tracing of the side-lines of crude sensuality on one hand,
and of unmeaning survival on the other. Tailor and mil-
liner, hatter and bootmaker, then may have their products
judged by various standards. What standpoint will the
judge select? Probably of course and unconsciously, the
conventional, slightly modified by the. primary aesthetic —
• yet the intelligent combination of the claims of utility with
those of beauty need not wholly be ignored ; while, if this
standard be fairly adopted, the judge must decide in favour
of those />roducts in which these claims are not asserted in
snch a way as to startle and repel the averag,<& consviinier.
Another aet of conditiona of increasing importaiicft m\sci^«t

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 45

industries clearly makes its appearance here : the nature of
the material and the processes of its production may be
directly worked out, or any amount of elaborate counter-
feiting may be gone into. On utilitarian grounds this is, of
course, wholly indefensible and wasteful ; equally is it so on
aesthetic grounds, although this is too frequently a field of
misapplied aesthetic endeavour. Little argument is, how
ever, needed to show that an art workman might do some-
thing better with time and paint than grain stone like oak
and wood like marble ; yet this principle, if carried out,
would obliterate half the art industry of the last three
centuries, and many of our household possessions merely
serve to show how the child's love of imitation may persist
in and enslave the man. Of course, where a new product
or process obtains naturally and more cheaply the effect of
an old one, the utilitarian and aesthete may alike gladly
adopt it ; by all means let us make our velvet of jute instead
of silk if it can be shown to look and wear as well.

Coming now to the third great class of ultimate products,
those connected with housing, we find its criticism again
easily practicable upon the same lines. The primitive shelter
soon acquires ornament, beginning, doubtless, with those
incised sketches on the wall, such as are to be found in the
caverns of the stone age. By-and-by the mat and basket
are woven with varied colour ; later, with civilisation and
growing wealth, houses and public buildings become de-
corated without and enriched within. That the magnificence
of ancient Athens, or the far more varied and gorgeous
splendour of all the details of the civic, religious, and private
life of the great mediaeval commonwealths was in this way
a natural and in the main healthy evolution of aesthetic
complexity and fulness, need not here be demonstrated :
more important is it to note that the side-lines of decay
existed from the first. The exaggeration of sensuous aspects
and details invariably marks the decline of Greek sculpture
or of Gothic building, while the converse error, where force
of habit hardens into dead conventionality, is incipient from
the earliest imitation of wood-work in the maaorLS^ ol -yc^i
Boric temple, and reaches its c\i\ni\TkaX\OTL\^ «^^^%?i\a.
the worn-out Renaissance ornamexA. o1 e^crj es.'«'25osN%^^^

SRk

46 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

or shop-front. These two forms of aberration have, moreover,
been united, and that in the most exaggerated forms, at two
main epochs of the world's history. They are characteristi-
cally seen in the buildings of the declining Roman Empire,
or in, those of the great capitals of empire during the present
century ; first, St. Petersburg and Munich and Berlin,
next, Paris under the Empire ; and a host of smaller cities
are following suit. Their vastness yet monotony of design,
the elaborate finish yet utter spiritlessness of detail, need no
description ; but the essential character of the Roman and
Renaissance styles (whether in their pure, decayed, or ex-
humed state, matters not) is well worth seriously noting.
They agree in effacing the individuality of the worker well
nigh as completely as does the great Pyramid itself. The
architect is in fact a petty Pharaoh, for whom crowds of
characterless workers, urged only by fear and hunger, sul-
lenly smooth and lay their stones. The living periods of
art, however, Greek or mediaeval, were, on the other hand,
invariably of thoroughly democratic type. The architects
were but the elder brethren of the guild-house, and while
co-ordinating the most complex architectural combinations
the world has ever seen, and within this all the subordinate
arts of sculpture and painting, metal work and furnishing,
they yet managed not only to tolerate, but train and develop
the individuality of each individual worker, whether this
were simple or complex, comic or tragic, saintly or grotesque.
Of these possibilities, too, we have happily here and there
a dawning instance among us. Houses really new sometimes
arise in London, and other great towns, which the mason
rejoices to build. Hardly a third-sized town but already
contains a painter or two who knows good colour from bad,
and who with his men takes again some of the old-fashioned
pleasure in laying on the former, despite the additional time
and higher wages which this may involve. Even the cabinet-
maker, after having copied for a century in cheap caricature
the extravagant drawing-room furniture of the mistress of
Louis the Well-beloved (varied only by an occasional parody
of Gothic details, curiously recalling the spasms of piety
wlu'ch rhythmically a>gitated that remarkable e^pocVi\, is
positively learning, with, such vitality aa lie Yiaa \ei\i, \icw \»

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 47

carve an occasionally fresh ornament upon an occasionally
weU-constructed article.

C Here, then, ar.e some of the possibilities, architectural and
subordinate, which have already obtained considerable pro-
minence in the more rationally designed world-shows. Not
only, in fact, have the historical and general exhibitions of
architecture of Paris and Vienna, or the streets of Old London
and Old Edinburgh, arisen in this way, but the building of
the first great exhibition, the Crystal Palace of 1851, gave
that deserved prominence to the architect which it is sadly
to be regretted he has not had the ability to retain. It is
natural that the best arranged exhibitions, whether we take
the case of Paris in 1878, or contrast Edinburgh with Liver-
pool in 1886, should have been those in which the special
training of the architect, both in the convenient and tasteful
arrangement of places and things, and in the co-ordination
of many industries, has been taken advantage of inside the
building as well as outside ; and it is clearly to be noted that
the material defects of exhibitions are in no small degree
traceable to the constant attempt on the part of their organ-
isers, necessarily for the most part specialists in some depart-
ment of production or exchange, to ''keep the architect in
his place,'' by attempting arrangements too gigantic indeed
for him satisfactorily to grapple with, even after the pre-
paration of a lifetime, yet all the more hopelessly out of
their own reach as unprepared amateurs.'"^

If space permitted, it would be interesting to pursue these
considerations, through the present developments of archi-
tecture and into its subordinate arts, from construction to
sculpture and decoration, and thence again to the industries
of furnishing ; the development and practical application of
the lines of criticism above laid down may, however, be easily
carried on by the reader. That in industrial exhibitions
some judgment, though necessarily not severe, should be
exercised upon the admission of objects, and that the specially
distinguished producers, from whose product or example
most is to be learned, should be invited and encouraged
to contribute {e.g., by borrowing, or if need be^ ^urc.Vsas^c£\%
typical exhibits), are principlea "^ax>\'^ qI to^xsx^^x^aR.'Ck'^^^^afc^^
yet needing enforcement. T\m» t^o^Xjctj \^«k^ox^\R«^^ ^»»gs.

48 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

Minton's, or bronzes like Christofle's and Barb^dienne's,
should be obtained for every exhibition, whether by means
of love or money. As already suggested, it also follows that
the mode of displaying products separately and in ** trophies,"
i.e. in ornamental designs which are infantile or barbarous,
should be replaced as far as possible by their synthetic
grouping in ways at once useful and artistic ; witness the
rooms at different scales of expenditure and standards of
comfort from palace to cottage, already happily appearing
in recent exhibitions, and of which, it is to be hoped, we may
see more at Glasgow and other prospective exhibitions. In
this respect Mr. Morris's exhibit of the furniture suitable for
a working-man's dwelling is specially to be noted in the
Manchester Exhibition of the present year.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 49

CHAPTER IX.

EXHIBITIONS AND ART EDUCATION.

<^Th£ relation of industrial exhibitions to art teaching is,
indeed, so obvious that the establishment of our national
art schools and museums since 1851, and the promises of
the (usually imaginary) surpluses of subsequent exhibitions,
need hardly be put in evidence. Since the artistic develop-
ment of the worker, like all human development, is a
gradual evolution from the simple to the complex, the
problem of raising taste and with it proportionately the
quality and value of the product, is seen to depend upon
the arrangement of an ascending series of what may be
called planes of life — that is to say, not only of precept,
but of exercisej. . not only of exercige, but of work ; not
y "of work, but of surroundingsT^In evolutionary terms
(and the problem of art education is one of evolution if
ever there is to be one), the function of the organism is
determined by its environment. Here, then, lies the use of
such re-arrangement of houses, of rooms, and their furnishing
as we have been arguing for ; for even the most official
educationists cannot for ever continue under the hallucination
that the productiveness of any art workman — past, present,
or future — stands in relation to examinations passed rather
than to the impressions of beauty taken in. Here, in short,
is the simple secret of art education, and with it of doubled
wealth and tenfold enjoyment : here lies the very Secret of
Beauty — yet, as happens with every open secret, men are
slow to read and slower still to act.

The comparative failure of South Kensington and its.
schools to develop taste \a no \oTi.%«t ^-ssfcw^aJiBaj^'^ ^^fx^sso. "««^
see its reason ; while the lax V\^«t Voa^ssws.^ ^-^^^ ^^ycspta.-

50 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

tive arts and even general production exercised of recent
years by the individual influence of two or three great
designers, or by such consumers as the ''aesthetic school,"
becomes intelligible. The former, moreover, aims almost
exclusively at educating the producer, who thereafter too
often starves or relapses. The latter method aims primarily
at educating the consumer, to whom the producer has every
inducement speedily to adapt himself. We shall have
industrial art when the rich consumers who set the fashion
in most products, and the smallest purchasers who consume
the bulk of almost all, demand it, and not till then. {jTo
set before rich and poor higher and better standards of
consumption than those now popular is, therefore, the
indispensable condition of any artistic progress. That this
comes peculiarly within the possibilities of an exhibition is
obvious ; and it has been partially attended to in several
of the more important, especially on the Continent ; in too
many others, however, the assistance of the art critic would
oftei]J)e an interference as uncalled for as that of the econo-
mistj Yet the conclusion of the whole matter with respect
to tEe arrangement of exhibitions as museums of production
simply is that they are to help us to find out in due detail
what good houses are like inside and out, and how their
inhabitants can be best fed, clothed, and developed ; common-
place purposes perhaps, yet they are those for which raw
materials and apparatus, industry and commerce, decorative
art and technical education all alike exist.

Without going too far into detail, the lines of working

out this scheme of art education may be briefly indicated.

The "primary aesthetic," or starting-point of absolute crude-

ness, is given for us not only by the child or the negro, or

even the average exhibition "trophy," but in most of the

surroundings of our everyday lives. The simplicity and

vividness of the only art of mural decoration extensively

employed in modem 'cities — that of the bill-sticker, need

not be insisted on, although his eye-impressing methods

might be shown to furnish the keynote to our artistic

sarroundingB, exactly as do his announcements to our lives.

^Ae start must be from a lower level ; even t\ie %^.\]A\&^t

A/I/ mainly impresses the mind of youth ; the aveta.%<& «A\JX\.

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 51

man or woman of a British industrial town has had even
that earliest stage of colour appreciation destroyed, partly
by discords, partly by total starvation of the sense, and is
only appealed to by the primeval stimulus of simple light,
which contemporary industrial processes have indeed ignored
as a necessity but all the more converted into a luxury.
Here is the explanation of the gigantic windows, gilded
mirrors, and innumerable gats- jets which, equally in the
typical gin-palace or drawing-room, mark the average taste
of the community, and on this principle may be explained
the substitution of Birmingham '* cut glass " ornaments for
the richly coloured and subtly curved blown ware of old
or new Venice, or the replacement of the art of carving by
that of French polishing during the past century. For
every eye must begin by preferring to the dull and intricate
surface of the one, the glossy simplicity of the other. Such
considerations have ruled modem architectural decoration,
clothing, and the like ; hence house-fronts are levelled and
smoothed, with, at most, occasional intervals of rustication ;
hence also the fixity of evening dress and of the shiny
''chimney-pot." The same effort to startle the dulled
modem eye is everywhere discernible ; not only the rules
of the flower-show compel the selection of the crudest
colours and forms, but the amateur and the professional
gardener replace the old-fashioned roses and lilies of the
flower-garden by a monotonous gaiety of "bedding out " in
stripes and circles of pure red, blue, and yellow around a
spiky araucaria. It needs some measure of ''success" to
reach this plane of primitive colour enjoyment even late
in life ; the disappearance of higher forms of art from among
modem communities is not, therefore, to be wondered at.
Yet there is no reason for despondency ; to convert the
national nineteenth century style of architecture and decora-
tion from an average organic necessity, as it is at present,
into the average organic impossibility it should be, we have
merely to pass our school children through this primitive
stage of enjoyment and production into those still higher,
so far as their respective individual c«^«jc?AJkS2?^ '5i^sssR. ^>i^»
£rst in some cases this woiild not \>^N«r^ \ax^\svi^»\!^"^^s^^^
at any rate in a dozen yeaTa,\ie «i» \\!K^^«^«5^^ '^'^'^ '^^'^^ "^

52 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

who should become an architect or a cabinet-maker to pro>
duce work of the present conventional type, as for any one
who had been encouraged at the right age to play with the
school box of bricks to accept it of him.
I The details of higher decorative and industrial stages of
juvenile life need not be discussed here. It is sufficient to
point out that the art committee of any exhibition has in its
power, with the assistance it could readily obtain from the
educational authorities and from voluntary societies like the
"Home Arts," and the "Recreative Schools," or from the
many private individuals who are working in this direction,
to give the art education of the country a greater stimulus
than it hsis had since 1851.^ The "artisan industries" and
"women's industries" sections now common in exhibitions,
although laudable in aim, do not succeed in this. The
women at best show good copies of old designs ; the men
more frequently, of course, produce something of a more or
less original kind, but too commonly useless miracles of
ugliness and wasted labour ; picture-frames of four thousand
pieces of different-coloured wood, when what one wants is
four pieces of the same ; toy machines, and romantic models
of cliff-perched castles under glass shades, are all there in
abundance, yet for art or even science, as artists or scientific
men understand these, one looks wholly in vain. Yet each
of these men is a lost artist : in happier days he would have
been, nay, perhaps might often still be, a true captain of
industry. Kemp's Scott monument in Edinburgh gives a
familiar case in point. In fine, keeping the matter on simply
economic grounds, the sense of wasted national resources
which follows any thoughtful survey of the artisan section
in an exhibition, is no less great or keen than that even of
wasted national resources of fuel or sewage, perhaps even
of wasted health. Yet there is no department of the vast
problem of the organisation of industry which can be more
easily grappled with, nor which promises more rich or direct
material results : why should not the organisers of our next
JSjrbJbitioD make a beginning ?

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 53

CHAPTER X.

EXHIBITIONS AND SOCIAL PBOGRESS.

As we have already seen, the uses of an industrial exhibi-
tion are not confined to the furtherance of production ; the
help of social, as distinguished from merely industrial pro-
gress, lies fully within its range. Our final problem, there-
fore, is, how can our exhibition, while keeping strictly to
its character of a museum of industry, and without of
course in any way trenching upon the field of political
activity, best utilise its opportunities of directing human
usefulness in the public service? Here, if ever, is the
occasion of doing something to justify our fine inaugural
speeches. ) No r is it either sensible or practical that exhi-
bition after exhibition should disappear like a soap-bubble,
without leaving any definite result or record of its existenc^H
a really instructive and interesting guide-book, and a brief
but substantial memorial volume should fairly mark the
opening and close of each. In the adaptation of an exhibi-
tion to the help of social progress, the appliances of health
of course claim the initial place ; and that these are best
arranged in relation to typical dwellings on various scales
will, no doubt, be generally granted. To enlist and combine,
in our most important cities, under the enthusiasm generated
by the prospect of an exhibition, those constructive occupa-
tions whose members so largely furnish the leaders and give
the general tone of all industries, and this in the two tasks
which essentially epitomise the present needs of civic pro-
gress, viz., the production of improved private dwellings,
and the supply of increased means of culture and healthy
enjoyment, affords an opportunity of social progress which
cannot indefinitely contmue \iO \>^ '^^&\^^L5\^y^N5^*'oss>fo\R> '^'*',
up, if not for the whole, at \ea»\.ioT ?k. ^on^Kss^^V*^^ ^-^sSssv-

64 INDUSTRL4X EXHIBITIONS

tion buildings, the sordid economy of squatting upon a
public park, and to see that even with the most moderate
reckoning for the loss of productive energies involved by
this wholesale exclusion of the conmiunity from their already
too scanty means of recreation and exercise, and for the
saving of wasteful destruction of buildings at the end, it
would actually pay the community to do this : while the
supreme result of setting before the industrial community a
new ambition, a nobler rivalry, and a higher ideal than their
everyday personal ones, would have an action even in quick-
ening, not to speak of raising, the production of wealth
which the most crudely utilitarian mind would soon appre-
ci&teTj To take a single instance, we do not require another
Health Exhibition to show that there now exist a few
plumbers acquainted with and interested in sanitation ; but
we have not perhaps as yet in the kingdom a street in which
their best work can be seen and tested. Let the exhibition
begin such a street; Old London and Old Edinburgh are
very well in their sentimental way, but why should we not
hear next year of some beginning of a practical New Glasgow .
or New Melbourne ? How long is America to have in Pull-
man City almost the sole modem attempt at constructing a
healthy and beautiful town ? Yet we are constantly speak-
ing of the production of wealth as if we seriously desired to
practise it. In such a model street the carrying on, not only
of the home industries, but even of many of the larger ones,
might profitably and instructively be associated, and the
great object-lesson of an exhibition would in this way again ,
be brought to bear on practical life. Our ideal street, with
its permanent art gallery and recreation halls, with its
simple picturesqueness continued from the past, yet its com-
plex supplies of heat, and light, and energy, anticipating
the future, would yet be the best practical exhibition of the
present ; it might be made at once a museum of production,
a Oalerie de Travail, and an Industrial Village.

Passing from the interests of wealth and health to those
of education, no longer merely technical but general, we
require more than mere rows of school forms and black-
boArds, A small reference library, a gymnaaVvmi m o^ew*.-
^Jon, a boya* workshop, where schoolboys cou\d aaafcTc^\«>

AND MODERN PROGRESS. 55

regularly to learn the use of hands and tools for a trifling
fee — such are some of the desiderata. Again, let the
members of the Societies of Arts, the architects and en-
gineers, the learned societies, the universities, be invited
to furnish from among their numbers an occasional guide
for teachers through their various departments, and let
these again take their pupils. Lectures, scientific and
technical, are of course also wanted ; and as for the sciences
these may be easily illustrated not only in detail, but
what is now becoming more important, in synthesis.
Astronomer and chemist, geologist and biologist, would
all gladly co-operate : a small telescope might be planted
in one corner of the exhibition, a tiny patch of garden
plot might be saved from bedding out, and kept clear of
araucarias, to make a type botanic garden, where the
hundred plants of most practical use and human interest
might for the first time be set simply and intelligibly before
all men, and so on. It is not the fact that such innovations
might cost £10 apiece that makes them "unpractical," they
would in fact be cheaper than what they should replace :
the well-nigh insuperable difficulty to their adoption by our
present organisers of exhibitions is at bottom simply a senti-
mental one ; happily, however, in the long-run, utility may
be expected to prevail. The claims of anthropology are so
far set forth by the Indian Village or the like ; those of
history by the retrospective exhibitions, all of them good
things capable of much improvement ; while the specialist
congresses of various exhibitions furnish an example which
should be adapted to the particular needs and opportunities
of^Jhe district.

^^^gpming finally to the problems of civic and public life,
efficient means of widening and stead3dng the average con-
ception of human society by some clear exposition of its
slow growth and complex working were never so much
needed in the world before^ The Exhibition of the City of
Paris in 1878, and the Government House at_Philfl,^f^lp>^ift,
have been already mentioned as examples of this, but the
very richness of this field of economic and social possibilities
forbids our entering upon it *, sviSicife \\. \» ^^\x5i^ <s«Qj^*^^^*<i«a^
admirable movement for axxppV^m^ ^-a Vi^ssiN. ^-assiw^ «k^ ^"^^

56 INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS

veloping the local completeness of even the smallest towns,
which has awakened to such active and conscious progress
during the present year, should find in the contemporary
exhibitions its summary, focus, and new starting-point ;
while conferences upon the local wants of the city might
now profitably become inter-civic. To set forth the
"jubilee" schemes of the present year for mutual sug-
gestion and criticism would be one of the most easy and
attractive, as certainly also one of the^^most useful of
possible new features of an exhibition. Ij^ew inventions
and new details of all kinds hardly need exhibitions to
bring them before us, our daily life and daily press do this
fairly as it is_£jbut of the vast rise of civilisation which is
now silently beginning everywhere around us, literature
is as yet hardly conscious, while most men's daily life has
as yet come far too little in contact with it to take heed
or hopeT} Our industrial and civic Renaissance, although
beginning, is only just doing so ; hence the need and useful-
ness of a Gallery of Civic Progress. For to make this pro-
cess conscious and intelligible would be to aid and accel-
lerate it ; and in these days of industrial depression and
upheaval there is no economic need greater or more pressing
than that of replacing crude and vague Utopias by rational
and realisable, yet noble and public aims. To this end
should converge the opening, closing, and award -giving
ceremonials, which already mark in history the institution of
the due commemoration and idealisation, the "social cult" of
industry. The ode and oration, festival and pageant, with
which the great exhibitions have been celebrated, were the
natural and fit expression of this higher view of industry,
not merely of that thirst for personal and professional
honour which often imconsciously underlies and excites the
struggle apparently for more profits or higher wages. Thus
our exhibitions might open up the means of reconciling
industrial progress with industrial order ; of combining the
ideals of the ** Golden Year " with the common-sense activity
of the present one; in short, of proving in daily life the
truth thsit

" Unto him that works, and leeVa Yift "wotYs^
This same grand year is evei at ttift doota."